red to taunt him with his weakness, pretending that he
had been induced by me to establish a new industrial company."

Daniel said nothing.

"And you," continued Miss Brandon,--"you allowed Miss Henrietta to say
all these offensive and absurd things. I should induce the count to
engage in an enterprise where money might be lost! Why? What interest
could I have?"

Her voice began to tremble; and her beautiful eyes filled with tears.

"Interest!" she went on to say, "money! The world can think of no other
motive nowadays. Money! I have enough of it. If I marry the count, you
know why I do it,--you! And you also know that it depended, and perhaps,
at this moment, still depends upon one single man, whether I shall break
off that match this very day, now."

As she said this, she looked at him in a manner which would have caused
a statue to tremble on its marble pedestal.

But he, with his heart full of hatred, remained icy, enjoying the
revenge which was thus presented to him.

"I will believe whatever you wish to say," he answered in a mocking
tone, "if you will answer me a single question."

"Ask, sir."

"The other night, when I had left you, where did you go in your
carriage?"

He expected to see her confused, turning pale, stammer. Not at all.

"What, you know that?" she said, with an accent of admirable candor.
"Ah! I committed an act of almost as great imprudence as I now do. If
some fool should see me leave your rooms?"

"Pardon me, Miss Brandon, that is no answer to my question. Where did
you go?"

And as she kept silent, surprised by Daniel's firmness, he said
sneeringly,--

"Then you confess that it would be madness to believe you? Let us break
off here, and pray to God that I may be able to forget all the wrong you
have done me."

Miss Brandon's beautiful eyes filled with tears of grief or of rage. She
folded her hands, and said in a suppliant tone,--

"I conjure you, M. Champcey, grant me only five minutes. I must speak to
you. If you knew"--

He could not turn her out; he bowed profoundly before her, and withdrew
into his bedroom, closing the door behind him. But he immediately
applied his eye to the keyhole, and saw Miss Brandon, her features
convulsed with rage, threaten him with her closed hand, and leave the
room hastily.

"She was going to dig another pit for me," thought Daniel.

And the idea that he had avoided it made him, for a part of that day
at least, forget his sorrow. But